Digitalization makes personnel consulting fast and efficient

“My core tasks as a personnel consultant: I have to understand the requirements, read between the lines and sense what my client wants. I have to check the candidate's personality to see if they are a good match.”

You helped set up your in-house research center, what exactly happens there?

We try to analyze data in our research center on an ongoing basis and not just after a contract has been awarded. To do this, we observe our clients' industries: What does the structure of the competition look like, who is moving where. Of course, this is not only possible via the Internet. It is important that we close these gaps with investigative research - known in the industry as ‘ident’. We live from data, the more up-to-date it is, the better we are.

Why is your research center leading the way in the industry?

Our research center has been around for 20 years. This means that we have been cultivating our contacts for just as long - from sales engineers to CEOs. We currently have access to more than 780,000 profiles, which is an enormous potential. Our USP is the rapid availability of potential candidates. We work closely and continuously with insiders. This requires building trust and long-term relationships. We also have a system that allows us to map the information in such a way that we can retrieve it at any time. We have developed our own software for this purpose, which is also able to display the organizational structures of competitors.

How many employees work there?

We currently have 27 employees working in our research center, who we train ourselves. We set very high standards for the quality of our research, which is why we pass on our expertise. We work with students who we employ on a permanent basis and who we often retain after their studies. Such a system is cost-intensive, but our company founder, Thomas Deininger, recognized early on that setting up a research center was essential. You don't have to have one, but it is crucial to maintaining quality.

How much do you use digital tools in your candidate search?

80 per cent of the process has to be digital. That's the same for us. We have converted everything that can be done digitally. For around 10 years now, we have even been completely digital in our processing, even when it comes to invoicing. However, we are constantly scrutinizing what we can change and how we can become even more efficient.

And how exactly does the candidate search work?

At least four to six Research Centre employees are involved in every search, regardless of whether it's for a board member or a sales engineer. The center is divided into three pillars: identification, i.e. investigative research, websearch and the infobase. Websearch concerns all research on business networks such as Xing, LinkedIn, job boards and other social media sites such as Instagram or Facebook. The aim is to assess the professional qualifications, but also the personality of the candidate and whether they are a good fit for the company. The third area deals with processing. Every piece of information about the respective process is stored digitally in our database and must always be up to date. Everything is transparent. These three pillars are our success factor.

A purely digital approach is controversial because it is difficult to capture the personality of an applicant. How do you see this?

Digitalization is very important for us in order to be fast and efficient. The computer can select candidates according to certain parameters. After the digital research, however, you have to speak to the candidate directly. At the end of the day, we need people who can read other people, that's essential. There will be no other solution for this in the future. That's the added value of why the client hires us.

What is most important when you are looking for a candidate?

My core tasks as a recruitment consultant: Understanding the requirements and sensing what the client wants. Checking the candidate's personality to see if they area good match. Then my job is done. We are very process-orientated. If we already have two interesting candidates at the beginning, we still carry out the entire process once so that nothing is left to chance.

How much has digitalization changed the market?

We used to need three to six months for a consulting process and that was fast. Today, we have to deliver in four to six weeks, more like four weeks. We go to these lengths to meet these requirements. That's why I believe the future of personnel consulting lies in research. 30 or 40 years ago, the personnel consultant with his excellent personal contacts was the most important thing.Today, this no longer plays a decisive role. I write to a CEO via LinkedIn. If he replies to me, I have the contact. That's why we have to ask ourselves what the added value of our service is. It is that we deliver quickly and check the candidates comprehensively. The client wants transparency and to be more involved in the process. That's why we are currently working on software that will allow the client to see where the process is at any time and even influence it under certain circumstances.

Will digitalization play an even greater role in the future with greater big data opportunities? How far can the digital search for candidates be developed?

We are currently developing a tool that uses a self-learning system (machine learning) to draw conclusions about other profiles based on the pattern of one profile. A trivial example: there is someone who lives in Frankfurt-Niederrad, is a member of the tennis club there and works at Fraport. If this is the case five times in the database, the machine says that the probability of someone who lives inFrankfurt-Niederrad, is a member of the tennis club and would like to work at Fraport is high. So, it throws me a candidate that neither Fraport nor we would otherwise have considered. The computer needs a lot of data for this, which we have with our 780,000 profiles.

That sound like artificial intelligence? What role does it play?

I'm always careful with the term artificial intelligence. Many providers advertise with it, but if you go deeper, it's automation. There is a lot of automation, we do that too. AI is when the computer automatically prints out two profiles that match my client. We don't have that at the moment. But the “machine learning” I mentioned is moving in this direction. You could go even further and use the tool to recognize people who have a certain qualification and conclude that they could develop in a certain direction because others in the database have done the same. For example, a graphic designer who has ended up in personnel consulting. That would be the use of artificial intelligence.